We had a few carriers that we used at different stages, but mostly used the Hotsling pouch. That thing was a huge saviour to me. As a newborn, he could be enclosed in it to nurse to sleep, it was wonderful. No one could even tell I was nursing when he was in it either. Then as he grew he loved sitting in it on my hip. Really comfy and easy to wear too.

get a quality breast pump, comfortable underwear-(you'll have what i call the 'mudflap' after the baby is born, boxer briefs are great for this), and i swear by those little gel things you put in the fridge and put on sore nipples. breast feeding is definitely not easy, but very worth it.

How do you deal with people and too much baby talk??? My MIL is head over heels for my little neice, which is awesome but she is 100% baby talk, all the time (or at least that is how I hear it). I get that it is going to happen, but is there a nice way to ask her (or others) to tone it down and treat the baby like a little human and talk normally from time to time. I feel like too much baby talk can hinder a child's learning process.

I didn't read the article, but I fear I will have the opposite problem with my MIL. She always brags about how she never spoke baby talk to Nate when he was a baby and always talked to him like an adult. (I find this hard to believe sometimes because she speaks baby talk to him now, but I could write a book about how strange his family is). ANYWAY, she likes to use cuss words that I would never say and definitely never say in front of a child and I don't think she will have any filter. I guess my point is that I hope she uses words like weiner and poopy doopy over croissant.

how have you guys dealt with religion/religious holidays? Nate and I had a discussion about it this morning with it being Easter today. We are not intending to raise our child Christian. My family is non-practising Catholic and his family is kind of Buddhist/Christian hybrid. I don't think his parents will care if we don't baptise our son, but I think it will bother my parents. I feel pretty strongly that if I am not intending to raise him Christian then there is no point in baptizing. That being said, how do you deal with holidays? I think we will celebrate Christmas, one because it is my birthday and I freaking love all things Christmas but also because I feel it has become more than a Christian holiday. And what about Easter? I don't have a problem telling my son the story of Easter and Jesus and everything, but I don't want to go to church and how do vegans deal with the egg dyeing thing?

It sounds like you and Nate agree on the same stuff Brett and I do. We agree that we are both non-practicing so we will adhere to the secular aspects of holidays and not the religious. So Easter egg hunts but no Easter Sunday Mass. I feel a bit bad because I loved Sunday school and church and they were literally the highlight of my week as a kid, and my child won't grow up with that as part of their life. My priest was so great, and I could talk to him about anything - he was an adult who listened and respected all of us, even though he was in his sixties and we were tweens.

My neighbor's six year old looked at me and went "Are you having a baby?" I guess that means I'm starting to show.... I haven't been able to fit into my jeans for 2 weeks now, so its all leggings all the time, but I'm not sure I'm ready for maternity stuff yet. When did you start buying maternity stuff? I am worried that if I get it now, I'll grow out of it in no time. I'm just at 12 weeks and my sweaters are starting to no longer cover my tummy. Also, I can find my fundus really easily now!

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

I loved Sunday school, too! I also love some of the ceremonious stuff about Catholic church, but there is no way I am going to raise my son in it because I just cannot support the vatican and all the crepe that the Catholic church preaches.

When I first got pregnant I went to target and bought a few maternity shirts and I bought tank tops that were long so I could wear them under things. I could start telling I was pregnant around 12 weeks, but I didn't really start truly showing until I was about 6 months (before that I just looked like I had gained weight). Now I have strangers that will ask me or ask how far along I am. Also, interestingly I have had several women that will say, "boy, right?" it is insane, never had anyone guess a girl! I also bought some jeans at the beginning that were just larger than what I normally wore and last week was probably the last time I will be able to wear them - just low-rise that were slightly larger than normal size. I bought maternity jeans a little while back and honestly even now they are still a little too large to stay up without me constantly pulling them up. I guess I don't have an answer for you. I feel most comfortable in leggings and dresses now and am planning to get a few more dresses.

I bought my first maternity dress last week. I am 13 weeks. I only bought it because I can wear it as a non maternity dress too. I probably wouldn't buy any pants or shorts that are maternity until you actually need them so that they will fit. I know some ladies fill out differently. I would buy a tank top now but probably not a shirt or pants. I actually don't think I will need any tank tops since all mine are the long and lean ones. What do you guys think? I tried on the old navy tank tops and they fit just like their regular long ones.

Oh and littlebear, I hung out with my friends today who are vegan with vegan kids and are also not religious at all. We had a potluck for breakfast and all the kids did a easter egg hunt. Just the plastic eggs filled with vegan candy and stickers and coins and stuff.

I never bought a single maternity outfit. My mom gave me some too-big skirts with drawstring waists, and I wore them tied over the bump. I wore my own jeans up to 8 months(because my style worked well with for that--the waist was under the baby bump). I got a Bella band but actually used it more after I gave birth--it was too uncomfortable to wear the way it's recommended during pregnancy. Honestly the only thing I wanted to wear by the end were the kind of dresses you wear to cover swimsuits.

I think maternity clothes-buying is all about your body type and how you gain weight in pregnancy. i am tall and have a long torso and gain almost all my weight in the torso--non-maternity tops don't work after the first 12 or so weeks. Even maternity shirts start getting too short for me near the end! I got so uncomfortably bloated that I was wearing below-the-bump maternity pants almost from the day I took a positive test. I hate the full panel ones and can wear the below-the-bump ones until delivery. If you buy your regular pre-preg size, you should have some room to grow but they shouldn't be annoyingly big. I buy a size down just because I don't gain much in my hips/thighs.

Another question on disposables: for the people who used cloth diapers, did you use disposables while traveling or for long periods away from home? If not, did you find cloth/reusable diapers to be difficult to deal with, ie carrying around a dirty and maybe smelly diaper all day?

I use cloth away from home. I have a big wet bag that holds the dirty ones. I have 100% cotton prefolds and they do not smell when they are wet. Breastmilk poop has a mild smell, but it's not bad. It just smells like yogurt. Maybe once we start solids and are dealing with actual turds, things will be smellier, but also he will not be pooping as frequently. The only inconvenience is that cloth diapers take up more space in the diaper bag, especially when you're carrying the used ones instead of just throwing them away. Not a problem if you're working out of a car, but if you're out walking around for the day you need a larger bag. I have only done day trips so far. I don't think using cloth away from home would be problematic for 2-3 day trips, but after that I'd need to do laundry, and I'd be hesitant to wash diapers in someone else's machine (because of detergent buildup, and because they might be grossed out). The thing with disposables is that although they are supposed to be more convenient, they leak a good 50% of the time (for us). Once we were sitting at the library while Walt was wearing a disposable and I noticed my leg was wet--poop had come out the leg of his diaper, through his pants, and through my pants. We had to go home to clean up and it sucked. I have never had a mess like that in cloth.

Kiddo wrote:

I think maternity clothes-buying is all about your body type and how you gain weight in pregnancy.

Exactly. If you are getting uncomfortable, go shopping. I wore elastic waist skirts and yoga pants until about 24 weeks, and then got a full panel skirt and wore that sucker every day. I needed maternity teeshirt right away, because my boobs got huge and my pre-pregnancy shirts were positively obscene. Nobody at work knew I was pregnant; it just looked like I was choosing to wear inappropriately tight shirts.

I'd say it kind of depends on how your clothes normally fit you. I can still wear looser normal tops (oh you giant boobsplosion ladies with your "problems"! I think I graduated to a C cup so far.), basically when we decided to have a kid I got some nonmaternity, empire-waist tops designed to be loose in the belly whose bounds I am only barely, at 6 months pregnant, starting to reach. However, I do like the length of maternity tops and frankly I wish normal tops were that length!! However, I tend to like things looser and really did not much like the maternity tops that were designed to be tight, but stretch over a belly.

A couple of bella bands in neutral colors that go well with the widest range of your clothes (I have brown and black, if I got another it would be gray probably) served me well through the late first and all of second trimester. The idea is that you can wear your regular jeans unzipped under the bands, and that works well enough but I also found that they were invaluable as a sort of belt. Up until very very recently I needed maternity pants but the built-in stretchy waists would NOT stay up well. Under belly, over belly, didn't matter, they would all sag in the butt within half an hour of putting them on.

Basically I went out and acquired a bunch of maternity stuff ASAP - like, as soon as I knew I was pregnant at 4.5 weeks! - and haven't regretted it. Everything is sized based on prepregnant sizes, and that mostly works. Recently I bought some cargo pants in large despite prepregnantly sizing as a medium - both sizes fit, but I figured looser might work best for the future, and I liked them nice and cool for summer. (speaking of which, they don't look like much on the website but i absolutely LOVE these. http://www.apeainthepod.com/Product.asp ... ory_Id=MC5 <= i'm not one for capris or khakis usually, but you can wear them down as regular pants and the length is good, they stay up very very well sans bella band, and they're on sale! I just ordered the black and navy today after loving the khaki so much, they also come in white)

Basically, I've done the following:- shopped clearance sections of maternity websites.. If you do this just as you get pregnant you can probably catch the clearance for whatever season you'll be most pregnant in. Try Motherhood Maternity, Pea in the Pod, Japanese Weekend, etc. 6pm.com also has had some good maternity deals. For nicer brands Gilt works, Zulily is worth keeping an eye on, sometimes Babysteals has stuff. (though for all those sale sites, compare with regular prices before buying anything.) - Bought a giant lot of maternity clothes in M/L via craigslist from a local person. It came to less than $5/item, and supplied me with lots of single color basics, some dresses, some jeans, some shorts and capris.. I didn't love everything but the price can't be beat and I knew I wouldn't go naked. If you start keeping a vigilant eye on craigslist early you can get exactly what you want, people will usually list brands and sizes. I found ebay much less worthwhile, unless you want designer stuff, but honestly since you get get James Jeans for like $90 on 6pm.com I wouldn't pay somebody $75+ for a used pair of jeans (and I've seen the designer brands going for over a hundred used. Nutty!)- Bought a few items I genuinely loved at full price. This includes an awesome swirly blue and white Olian top, aforementioned khakis that are now on sale.. - I needed a formal dress recently. Rentmaternitywear.com seemed promising but by the time I saw what little they had in stock and priced it I decided to just go to a department store and look for a nonmaternity dress with an empire waist designed to drape a bunch at the front. This worked out great, giving me a lot more selection.

I think you can tailor your own plan based on budget, how professionally you need to dress, and your body shape/how you tend to gain weight. I normally buy pricier clothes but don't shop much - I buy things to last - so maternity clothes are frustrating to me; I know I'm not going to wear them long. On the other hand, when I did buy a few things at eg target I found the material very thin and actually had a couple tops get holes at the seams. Yuck. Wouldn't buy any of their maternity stuff again, and my advice on that is that if you want to save money, wait for nicer brands to go on sale or buy used, rather than going with cheap stores. On the other hand the Old Navy stuff I got used seems fine, and the jeans I got from the navy exchange are great if quite a loose fit.

I bought maternity pants at 18 weeks and wore largish pants I had until then. I am constantly being told I look small for how far along I am - I personally feel huge. I bought some large puffy shirts (Old Navy, Target) for the time being (I am 29 weeks). I have some hand me downs from my SIL, a few skirts and shirts and capris. I like the low stretch band, not the over the belly bands. Of course I found out after I bought 3 pairs of pants, so I will suck it up for the next three months. I am itching to get some dresses to wear, but I do not want to spend the money, I spent maybe $80.00 on maternity clothes and wear the same things over and over.

We also had the conversation about religion this weekend because of Easter. We are not getting the baby baptized and are not raising it Catholic as we were raised as neither of us practice or believe. I cannot control how parents (esp. his very religious Catholic parents) will handle it, but it is our child so we are raising it this way. Easter will be about Spring and new life. Christmas will be about Santa when it is little and then family time, winter celebration. I suppose holidays will be a celebration of the season. Once it is old enough to understand we will explain the religious reasons (all religions) for certain holidays.

Re: cloth away from home: it is not uncommon for the Emperor and I to be out of the house for 8-9 hour stretches, and we use cloth on these daytime excursions. My setup is much like mittenmacher's. The Emperor's poop IS stinkier now-- by far-- but most of the time it just shakes off, so I just shake the diaper into a nearby toilet or trash can before putting it in the wet bag. Et voila!

We do cloth when we go on longer trips to certain places, like up to see my in-laws. If it's somewhere I'd drive to and we have unlimited storage space, then yeah. We did recently buy our first pack of disposables though-- we were flying cross country and didn't want to deal with checking more than one bag and there was no way to fit enough diapers and all our other stuff. I'm glad we did it, because it was one less thing to worry about on a stressful trip.

There are compostable corn starch diapers you can get around here, and that's what we used. I think the brand is Nature Babycare. They were the same price as the 7th gen and other unbleached options here and are somewhat more biodegradable. Still not 100% though.

I think it really depends on the size of the kid. Dash is huge and super mobile even at 7 months old; I imagine he'll be in his crib till he's a year and a half, though maybe less if he learns how to climb out sooner than that. We bought a crib that converts to a bed though, so it's not like we have to buy yet another piece of furniture for him. I know lots of less mobile and smaller kids that were in their cribs till around 2 years old. If you already have a bed for him, maybe you could look into bed rails?

Yeah, he spends most of the night in our bed, but from about 8-10pm in a bassinet that he'll be too heavy for very soon. We do have a bed for him, in what will be his bedroom when we're ready to move him there. Maybe bed rails are the way to go, but I feel safer about him being in a crib when I'm not in the room. I just don't want to buy a crib for those first couple of hours when he's sleeping alone if it's only going to last until a year or something...

We're in a similar situation (the sleeping on his own for a couple of hours until we go to bed, but we have a crib). With as mobile as poopiebaby is now there is no way I would leave him on a bed raised off the floor, with or without rails. When I go in to put him back down when he wakes up, he's usually standing in his crib before he's even fully awake. Maybe try putting the mattress on the floor and put him down on that? If he rolls off it's not a big deal, and you can even lay down on it with him to put him to sleep if you want. That's what we did for MONTHS before I finally got poopiebaby sleeping an hour-ish at a time in his crib.

re: cribs...sometimes a lot of it has to do with whether the munchkin can climb out of the crib (which is dangerous), so then you have to transition to a toddler bed/big bed. One of my nanny girls stayed into her crib though til just after she was 2, just because she liked it so much! After her birthday, there was a big celebration of taking off the sides, lowering the mattress, etc. :)

on maternity clothes again, just for a minute...where did y'all find maternity swimsuits? We have a fab outdoor pool here, open during the summer months. Nanny charge #1 (the full timer) and I plan to live there this summer :D. I have two suits now, and they're already snug. One is some sort of superLycra, hold that belly in sort of suit, so that one's almost done already. The second is not as tight, but I thing my boobage line is getting lower and well, that's not the impression I want to make at the pool. I'm hoping to hold on till we come visit my folks in the US in a few weeks, as I'm finding diddly squat here.

We're in a similar situation (the sleeping on his own for a couple of hours until we go to bed, but we have a crib). With as mobile as poopiebaby is now there is no way I would leave him on a bed raised off the floor, with or without rails. When I go in to put him back down when he wakes up, he's usually standing in his crib before he's even fully awake. Maybe try putting the mattress on the floor and put him down on that? If he rolls off it's not a big deal, and you can even lay down on it with him to put him to sleep if you want. That's what we did for MONTHS before I finally got poopiebaby sleeping an hour-ish at a time in his crib.

That's helpful. Walter isn't really mobile yet, so it's hard to imagine. I will go ahead and buy an ikea crib, then. Putting a mattress on the floor seems like a great solution, but it won't work for us because we live in a 200 year old house with lots of lead paint and putting Walter so close to all that dust makes me nervous.

We have a crib that we use for Ezra's daytime naps, but it's one of those 3-in-1 dodads, so it'll turn into a toddler bed (with a safety side or something like that), and then into a full bed. It was the only way I was going to allow our family to buy us a crib, because I didn't know how much crib-time the kid was really going to have, but he would definitely need a bed down the line. I haven't seen it in any of its other transformer-like modes, but it's pretty neat!

on maternity clothes again, just for a minute...where did y'all find maternity swimsuits? We have a fab outdoor pool here, open during the summer months. Nanny charge #1 (the full timer) and I plan to live there this summer :D. I have two suits now, and they're already snug. One is some sort of superLycra, hold that belly in sort of suit, so that one's almost done already. The second is not as tight, but I thing my boobage line is getting lower and well, that's not the impression I want to make at the pool. I'm hoping to hold on till we come visit my folks in the US in a few weeks, as I'm finding diddly squat here.

I got a cute tankini top at Motherhood and bottoms at Old Navy (at the time, the bottoms were on super clearance). Still fitting better than I expected at 28 weeks! I wanted to find a skirt bottom though but have so far had no luck. Maintaining the bikini line is becoming near impossible and I might have to splurge on a non-maternity skirt one from Land's End or something.

I got a really cute tankini one on crazy clearance from A Pea In The Pod, but never ended up wearing it (I just wore my regular bikinis for beach/pool stuff - the tankini was supposed to be for water aerobics and the like). Old Navy usually has some good options, too, but it seemed like they sold out fast.